WHAT SCIENCE AND SUPER-ACHIEVERS TEACH US ABOUT HUMAN POTENTIAL

The book

The author

David Shenk is the national bestselling author of five previous books, including The Forgetting ("remarkable" - Los Angeles Times), Data Smog ("indispensable" - New York Times), and The Immortal Game ("superb" - Wall Street Journal). He is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com, and has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper's, The New Yorker, NPR, and PBS.

February 04, 2009

We live in a golden age of scientific discovery -- so much so that it can often seem overwhelming to keep track of all the observations (many of which seem to contradict one another). It's also usually impossible to identify the truly vital breakthroughs as they occur. We usually need time to help settle that for us.

So I admit that it feels like grandstanding to shine a klieg light on one particular piece of news as it breaks.

But in my years of tracking science, I've never seen a moment like this. Today feels like a new era.

Today the Journal of Neuroscience reports on a study by Tufts' Larry Feig that adds an important new puzzle piece to the emerging science of epigenetics.

Washington, DC February 3, 2009 – A mother’s life experience can affect the biology of her offspring, according to new animal research in the February 4 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The study shows that a stimulating environment improved the memory of young mice with a memory-impairing genetic defect and also improved the memory of their eventual offspring. The findings suggest that parental behaviors that occur long before pregnancy may influence an offspring’s well-being.

"Parental behaviors that occur long before pregnancy may influence a children's offspring."

This sounds kind of dry, but think about it for a second. This study suggests that you can take an adolescent kid, say a 12 year old, ramp up the intensity of her intellectual life, and as a result of that experience, when she gives birth ten years later her child will have intellectual advantages it would not have otherwise had.

If this seems like it contradicts every explanation you've ever heard about DNA and Darwinism, that's because it does. Epigenetics is the science of genetic expression, sending signals to genes to turn them on and off. And today's study is the culmination of about ten years of research suggesting that, even though we can't change our own DNA as we pass it down to our kids, we may be able to pass on our altered epigenetic material -- the material that surrounds the DNA and helps it figure out how to interact with the outside world.

There's no way this could not be confusing, with so little explanation. I apologize for not having more time to sketch this out -- as I will in future months and of course in my book. But I thought it was important to mark this day.